The most important thing I learned early in my career is that a performance turnaround only works when the employee owns it, not just agrees to it. That distinction became the foundation of how I approached one of the harder conversations I've had as a manager. I had a team member who was consistently missing the mark. Deadlines slipped, quality was inconsistent, and the energy they brought to the work had faded over several months. The instinct for many managers in that situation is to hand down a plan and monitor compliance. In my experience, that approach rarely produces lasting change, because the employee ends up executing someone else's vision of what they should become rather than their own. So I did something different. Instead of presenting a corrective plan, I asked them to build one. I gave them the framework and named the gaps clearly, without softening or hedging, and then handed them the pen. What does good look like to you? What timeline is realistic and also serious? What do you need from me, and what does accountability look like when you miss a marker? When a person sets their own terms, they can no longer point outward when they fall short. That shift in ownership changes everything about how the work unfolds. Over the following months, the improvement was real and measurable. Deadlines were hit consistently, the quality of their output improved noticeably, and their engagement with the team changed. But the more lasting outcome was something harder to put on a performance review. I watched someone rebuild their trust in themselves. They hit goals they had set, which is a fundamentally different experience than hitting goals handed to them. They started to understand that they could do what they said and say what they did, and that pattern of follow-through became the foundation they stood on when harder challenges came. Good coaching, in my view, requires both sides to design the solution together. When that happens, the result isn't just an improved performer, it's someone who carries a kind of earned professional confidence forward into everything they do next.
I almost fired our best warehouse manager. This was at my fulfillment company when we were doing about $7M in revenue. Sarah ran our night shift and her pick accuracy had dropped from 99.7% to 96.2% over three months. Returns were spiking. I was getting complaints from two major clients. My instinct was to put her on a performance plan and start looking for a replacement. Instead I did something that felt uncomfortable at the time. I worked an entire night shift alongside her team. What I discovered changed how I give feedback forever. Sarah wasn't underperforming because she didn't care or lacked skills. She was drowning because we'd added 40,000 SKUs without updating our bin location system. Her team was walking twice the distance per pick compared to day shift. They were exhausted and making mistakes because our process was broken, not because they were lazy. The next morning I sat down with Sarah and said something I still use today: "I'm seeing a problem but I think I'm looking at the symptom, not the cause. Walk me through what's actually happening on the floor." She laid out everything. The inefficient routing. The outdated inventory maps. The fact that night shift always got stuck with the complex multi-item orders while day shift cherry-picked the easy single-SKU picks. We fixed the bin system over two weeks. I also started rotating order complexity across shifts. Within 30 days Sarah's accuracy was back to 99.4%. Six months later she helped us design the layout for our new 140,000 square foot facility. The lesson stuck with me: feedback without context is just criticism. Before you tell someone they're failing, make sure you understand what they're actually fighting against. Sometimes your best people are underperforming because you've set them up to fail.
Hi, Chris here — I run Visionary Marketing, specialist SEO and Google Ads agency. We're a small team so underperformance is impossible to hide — and impossible to ignore. I've got a specific example of this working out. About two years ago, one of our account managers was consistently missing campaign review deadlines and the quality of her client reports had dropped noticeably. My first instinct was that she wasn't motivated. Turns out I was the problem. In our one-to-one I didn't lead with "your work has slipped." I asked a different question: "What's getting in the way of you doing your best work right now?" She told me she was spending roughly 40% of her week on admin tasks I didn't even know she'd inherited — uploading reports to client portals, chasing invoices, formatting spreadsheets. The actual strategic work she was hired for was getting squeezed into whatever time was left, usually late in the day when she was already fried. The fix wasn't a performance improvement plan. It was removing 15 hours of admin from her plate. We automated the report formatting, reassigned the invoice chasing, and built a shared upload process that took 10 minutes instead of an hour. Within about six weeks, her campaign review completion rate went from around 70% to 98%. Client satisfaction scores for her accounts went up 18% that quarter. She's now our most senior account manager. The specific improvement: she went from someone I was genuinely considering letting go to someone I'd build a department around. The approach that made it work was treating underperformance as a diagnostic problem rather than a discipline problem. Nine times out of ten, when someone good starts delivering bad work, something structural has changed — not their attitude. Chris Coussons Founder, Visionary Marketing chris@visionary-marketing.co.uk
I had a developer once who was technically brilliant but kept missing deadlines. The quality was there, but projects would drag out and the rest of the team had to scramble to cover. Classic case of someone who'd get lost in the weeds optimizing a font file for three days when the client just needed the site to pass Core Web Vitals. Instead of another "hey, need you to move faster" conversation, I sat down with him and showed him our project margins. No blame, just numbers. I pulled up three of his recent projects and walked through the gap between what we'd scoped and the hours he'd actually logged. The look on his face said he genuinely hadn't seen the pattern. Then we started pairing him with our most deadline-obsessed developer for the planning phase of each project. Together they'd map out the "good enough" path before he went deep on optimization. He still got to tinker, but only after the core deliverables were locked. Within two months his projects were coming in within 10% of estimated hours. More importantly, he started catching scope creep before it ballooned. He told me later that seeing the business numbers made the deadlines feel real in a way "just be faster" never did. The improvement was really about understanding that our work only matters if it ships.
The instinct most managers have with underperforming team members is to increase pressure. More check-ins, tighter deadlines, closer monitoring. In my experience that approach almost always makes the problem worse because it treats the symptom rather than finding the actual cause. We had a developer at Tibicle who had been consistently strong for over a year and then started missing sprint commitments, producing work that needed repeated revisions, and going quiet in team discussions. The easy read was declining performance. The actual situation was that his role had quietly outgrown his current skill set as we moved into more complex microservices architecture, and he was too uncomfortable to flag it. The conversation that turned things around was not a performance review. It was sitting with him and asking one direct question: which part of your current work feels furthest from where you feel confident. That question opened everything up. We restructured his sprint assignments for six weeks to pair him explicitly with senior developers on the architecture components he was struggling with, removed him from solo ownership of those pieces temporarily, and set a clear 45 day milestone for where we expected him to be. Within two months he was leading microservices components independently and his sprint completion rate went from below 60% back above 90%. The improvement came from diagnosing the gap accurately before responding to it. Underperformance in technical teams is rarely about attitude. It is almost always about a skill gap that nobody named out loud yet.
The situation involved a mid-level project manager who had been solid for over a year and then slowly started slipping. Deadlines were missed by small margins, communication with clients became inconsistent, and teammates began quietly routing around her rather than through her. By the time it reached me the team had already mentally written her off, which made the situation harder because their withdrawal was reinforcing her isolation. My first instinct was to sit down and list everything that needed fixing. Instead I started the conversation with a question I almost never used to ask: what does a good week look like for you right now? Her answer surprised me. She described a version of the role that didn't match what the job had become. Over the previous six months her responsibilities had expanded informally she'd absorbed client reporting from a departed colleague and was handling scheduling that used to be shared. Nobody had formally reassigned these tasks or acknowledged the extra load. She was underperforming not because she'd lost motivation but because the role had quietly outgrown what one person could sustain. That conversation changed my approach entirely. Instead of delivering a list of problems I acknowledged what had happened and asked which parts of her expanded role she felt confident owning and which needed to be redistributed. We carved off the client reporting to a junior team member who actually wanted the exposure and simplified the scheduling process with a shared tool. Then we set specific weekly checkpoints not micromanagement but brief fifteen-minute conversations where she told me what was on track and where she felt stretched. The consistency of those check-ins mattered more than their content. She later told me that knowing there was a regular space to flag concerns made her less likely to quietly absorb problems until they became crises. Within six weeks the change was visible. Deadlines were met consistently, client feedback improved noticeably, and teammates started routing work through her again naturally. Four months later she led the most complex project delivery we'd done that year and handled it cleanly. The lesson was that underperformance is usually a symptom not a cause. If someone was previously capable and gradually declined, something changed and it's rarely just attitude. Asking what changed before telling them what's wrong opens a completely different conversation with far better outcomes.
One situation that comes to mind involved an SEO strategist whose performance was slipping due to delays tied to content approvals. Blog content, landing pages and campaign assets all required approval from both the client and the project manager which caused tasks to sit in review and pushed timelines off track. I addressed it through direct feedback on how approvals were being handled, pointing out that work was being submitted in fragments and without clear context which made it harder for stakeholders to review efficiently and respond on time. We aligned with the client and project manager using our "Weekly Approval Cadence System." All items for review were sent at the start of the week in a single, structured batch, with clear notes, expected outcomes and defined deadlines for feedback by Wednesday so execution could be completed by Friday. We tied this directly to the strategist's KPIs specifically on-time delivery rate and campaign launch consistency and tracked performance weekly. Within five weeks, tasks stuck in approval dropped from 21 to 6, a 71% reduction and missed deadlines decreased by 75%. The SEO strategist's on-time delivery KPI improved from 58% to 89% reflecting a clear turnaround in execution consistency.
A few years ago, I placed a household manager with a high-profile family in Geneva. At around 3 months, I received a call from the client with concerns. The candidate was really excellent on paper, but private households don't run on competence alone. According to the family, she didn't bring emotional warmth. I've already seen this happen and it's best to nip it in the bud early, otherwise, it could derail a solid placement. What I did next was contact her right away and kept the conversation focused on development. People can take difficult feedback when it's clear and respectful. I was straight to the point: the family valued her efficiency, but they also wanted someone who anticipated needs, remembered personal details, and showed consistent warmth in daily interactions. It was a direct, professional check-in. These conversations matter because small issues can quickly become lasting impressions in this kind of environment. She took it well, and that made a difference. Once she understood that emotional attunement carried as much weight as task execution, she adjusted quickly. She stopped simply completing requests and started paying closer attention to cues. She personalized the service more. She brought a steadier warmth to the day-to-day moments that shape how a household feels. Six weeks later, the client told me she was doing really well. After that, they asked if I could help another family in their network. That's the outcome you want: you protect the placement and strengthen trust. I've found that feedback works best in this industry when it's honest, specific, and respectful. Vague guidance doesn't help anyone improve. Specific examples do, because they show exactly what to change in a role where the so-called soft skills are often the hardest part of the job.
At my furniture company, I once had an employee who was struggling with order coordination and vendor follow-up, and it was affecting delivery timelines. Rather than assuming she lacked discipline, I looked more closely at how the work was structured. I found that too many instructions were being given verbally and priorities were shifting faster than she could track. My approach was to give feedback in real time, tie it to very specific missed actions, and then simplify the system around her with one shared task list and clearer deadlines. Within a few weeks, her missed follow-ups dropped, communication became much more reliable, and she started escalating problems earlier instead of hiding them. I think underperformance can sometimes reflect an unclear process more than an incapable person, and once people can see the work clearly, they often improve faster than expected.
Three years ago, one of our procurement coordinators was missing deadlines 67% of the time, affecting supplier relationships across 11 active accounts. Instead of escalating formally, I sat with her weekly for six weeks, sharing specific data points, not general complaints. We rebuilt her workflow together, introducing a simple priority tracking system. Within 90 days, her on time delivery improved to 94.3%. Supplier complaint tickets linked to her accounts dropped by 78.6%. She was promoted to Senior Procurement Lead 11 months later. That experience proved that structured, honest feedback backed by clear metrics transforms performance faster than any disciplinary process ever could.
A situation I observed involved one employee missing the handoff parameters from intake to the next step on the team which resulted in rework and delays. The problem was not due to lack of effort but rather that the employee was moving too quickly, was making inconsistent judgement calls, and believed they could fix the mistakes made due to missing information at a later time. My approach was to provide feedback which was very specific, highly observable and directly linked to the impact of the missing data: here is where the handoff occurred, here is what the next person had to do to correct the situation and here is the new standard moving forward. In addition, I provided a clear description of the handoff process by developing a simple checklist to use as a guide during the handoff process. I walked through a few examples of the handoff process with the employee and established a timeline with a short feedback loop of two weeks for the next submission. The results of the improvement were apparent very quickly. The employee's submissions became more complete, the number of follow-up questions decreased and the next team member no longer had to return items that had been submitted due to incorrect information. Equally as important was that the employee had increased confidence in their work because they no longer had to second-guess themselves regarding what constituted "good" work. Based on my past experiences, I have found that most underperformers will improve when their performance is evaluated in a way that moves beyond vague concepts of performance and is based on concrete, tangible operational measures. When an employee's performance is quantified and the corrective action is taken close to the point of failure, the employee improves at a much faster pace.
A senior writer was producing competent content that simply did not rank or convert. Feedback from SEO, sales, and even support tickets said the same thing: the articles sounded polished but missed real objections. I brought those voices into a short listening session, then let her choose two pieces to rebuild. The goal was to make content behave like a salesperson, not a brochure. We created a "friction map" from live call transcripts and rebuilt outlines around buyer doubts and next steps. She also started a weekly test where one paragraph was rewritten for AEO snippets and one for conversion intent. The improvement was tangible: time on page rose, leads increased, and the pieces began earning featured placements in search results. She went from writing on instinct to writing from evidence, and her confidence followed.
In one instance, an underperforming employee in a client-facing training role was struggling with engagement scores and delivery consistency. Structured feedback from post-training evaluations revealed a pattern, participants found the sessions informative but lacking energy and real-world context. Instead of a generic performance correction, the approach focused on targeted coaching built around this feedback, including session recordings, peer shadowing, and microlearning interventions on storytelling and facilitation techniques. According to Gallup, employees who receive regular, specific feedback are 3.6 times more likely to be engaged at work, reinforcing the importance of precision in feedback delivery. Within eight weeks, participant satisfaction scores improved by over 30%, and repeat training requests for the facilitator increased significantly, indicating not just performance recovery but measurable impact on business outcomes.
One example that stands out is when I supported a supervisor whose team had extremely low engagement scores, around the 5th percentile. The challenge wasn't just individual performance, but the impact their leadership was having on the team's experience. My approach started with listening. I created space through bi-weekly coaching check-ins where the focus was on understanding their leadership style, pressures, and any blind spots. From there, we worked on building awareness around how their behaviors were showing up for the team. I stayed closely connected to the team as well, attending team meetings and conducting a start/stop/continue exercise to gather direct feedback. That helped ground our coaching in real, actionable insights rather than assumptions. Together, we identified a few key shifts: improving communication, increasing recognition, and being more intentional about visibility and support. I provided clear direction, but also made sure the supervisor felt supported as they practiced new behaviors. We also kept a strong pulse on progress by reviewing updates during monthly engagement check-ins, so we could track how the team was responding and adjust in real time. These were done with the supervisor directly and during monthly team member meetings. The result was an incredible turnaround - the team's engagement scores went from the 5th percentile to the 99th percentile. What this reinforced for me is that leadership transformation starts with awareness and trust. When you take the time to truly listen, support, and guide, while holding clear expectations, you can create meaningful, measurable change. People caring for people.
We once had a specialist whose performance dipped after a role change. Feedback from their manager and peers pointed to the same issue. They were competent but defensive when asked to adjust. We started with a reset conversation that focused on intent. We asked what kind of feedback helps them act faster. They said written notes with examples. We switched to a structured feedback format. Observation. Impact. Next step. Each note included one concrete example and one option to try. We also asked them to give us feedback on our leadership weekly so the relationship felt two way. Over five weeks their responsiveness changed. They acknowledged input without debating it and tested changes quickly. The measurable improvement was fewer repeated errors and a stronger quality bar. Their peers reported smoother collaboration and a calmer tone in reviews.
I run an accredited, 100% online college with outcomes tied to real certifications and clinical placements, so I'm constantly coaching instructors and admissions staff to hit measurable standards (student engagement, lab performance, appointment-setting, follow-through). When someone's underperforming, I treat it like a skills gap, not a personality problem. One example: a newer admissions team member had strong integrity and people skills but was missing appointments and struggling to close over the phone. I pulled three call recordings, gave precise feedback on where the conversation lost structure, then we used a simple script: 2-minute needs diagnosis (GI Bill/MyCAA/CSP eligibility), one clear program match (CompTIA stack or MRI AAS), and a next-step close with a calendar invite sent live on the call. The improvement I saw wasn't "more enthusiasm"--it was fewer dropped balls and cleaner execution: consistent follow-ups in the CRM, tighter calls, and better-fit students enrolling (especially transitioning soldiers and military spouses who need clarity fast). The big lever was making feedback concrete, practicing it immediately, and measuring the next week's behavior--not debating motivation. That same approach scales nationally when you're serving online learners in every state: tight standards, fast feedback loops, and coaching that respects adult learners and the military community's timelines (CSP/SkillBridge windows and ETS dates). It's also why education publications and veteran-focused career platforms tend to like our story--accountability + access without pretending we're a bootcamp.
At TradingFXVPS, I've seen situations where specific feedback acted as the catalyst for substantial employee development. Early in my time as CEO, a crucial marketing group member had trouble with campaign results, reaching only a 20% completion rate on given tasks. Rather than dispensing generic guidance, I established a formal feedback process. I started weekly one-on-one meetings where we analyzed past campaigns in fine detail, pinpointing trends in missed due dates and engagement drops. I supported this with data-driven observations from our CRM platforms, connecting particular activities to missed performance standards. To foster improvement, we established quantifiable objectives divided into weekly sprints. For example, instead of targeting "better performance," we concentrated on actionable metrics like lifting email open rates by 15% in eight weeks. The change was astounding—within two months, not only did this individual surpass their prior figures, but they also crafted a campaign that boosted client retention rates by 30% in Q2. Coming from years of handling the challenges of recruitment, management, and development in high-stakes fields where accuracy is vital, like Forex trading and marketing analytics. The secret isn't merely feedback but constructing a clear performance story grounded in usable data, cultivating a setting where tangible growth is honored. These approaches show why I stress that feedback, when paired with accountability systems and personal empowerment, converts potential into quantifiable achievements.
I'm Runbo Li, Co-founder & CEO at Magic Hour. This question assumes a traditional management playbook that honestly doesn't apply to how we've built Magic Hour. David and I run a company with millions of users as a two-person team. We don't have underperforming employees to turn around because we don't have employees, period. And that's not a limitation. It's a deliberate architectural choice about how companies can be built in the AI era. But the spirit of the question, how do you deal with something that's not working and fix it, that I think about constantly. The difference is, my "underperformer" is usually a workflow, a template, a system, or even my own habits. Here's a concrete example. Early on, we had a video generation template that users were starting but not finishing at an alarming rate. Completion rates were somewhere around 30%. The old playbook would be to hire a product manager, run a two-week sprint, conduct user interviews, build a report. Instead, I sat down, looked at the drop-off data myself, and realized users were getting stuck on a single input step that required too much creative decision-making upfront. Within a day, I restructured the flow, added smart defaults, and completion rates jumped to over 70%. The lesson translates directly to managing people, though. When something isn't working, the instinct most leaders have is to evaluate the person. But nine times out of ten, the problem is the system around the person. You put someone in a confusing workflow with unclear expectations and too many decision points, they'll underperform every time. Simplify the environment, give them clear defaults and guardrails, and you'll be shocked how fast things change. That's what AI has taught me about leadership more broadly. Before you blame the operator, look at the operating system. If I'd had a team member struggling with that template workflow, my first move wouldn't have been a performance review. It would have been asking, "What about this process is broken?" The best feedback isn't "do better." It's removing the obstacle that made "better" feel impossible.
In my experience, the best thing I ever did for an underperforming employee was skip the paperwork and just talk to them directly first. Most managers document the problem before they actually talk to the person about it. I've seen that approach backfire repeatedly because the employee feels blindsided by paperwork instead of getting a real chance to fix things first. I had a team member whose client onboarding work kept falling short. Timelines slipped and details were missing. Instead of pulling out a performance improvement plan, I sat down and showed him exactly how his delays affected our client firms during their first thirty days on the platform, and what that cost us in trust. Once he saw the actual impact on real clients, his output changed within two weeks. Not months. In my experience, underperformance is usually a clarity problem, not a motivation problem.
The particular case that comes to mind is the case of a dispatcher who was highly skilled from a technical standpoint but struggled in the communication aspect. The clients were not getting quick enough responses, and the drivers were sometimes unclear about the last-minute changes. Rather than taking immediate disciplinary action, I decided to sit down with the individual and go over specific examples from the feedback from the clients and the calls made. I helped them design a system where they could send quick confirmations, provide quick updates to the drivers, and keep detailed notes in the dispatch system. I also had them shadow one of our most effective dispatchers for a week to see how they handled the pressure. Within a month the number of follow-ups from the clients was greatly reduced, and the drivers were having fewer issues. Employees are nearly 4 times more likely to be engaged in the workplace if they are given regular and constructive feedback, according to the Gallup (source: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/505370/great-manager-important-habit.aspx).